STAFF

Allegra Chapman is the Managing Director of Governors Safeguarding Democracy. She has over twenty years of experience in public service, state and federal civil and voting rights litigation, and democracy reform and advancement. Most recently, Allegra owned a consultancy (AAC Consulting, LLC), through which she advised civil rights groups and democracy-reform organizations on litigation, policy strategy and messaging, as well as advised philanthropists and funders on ways to ameliorate polarization. Previously, she served as voting rights director at Common Cause, where she oversaw litigation and worked with government officials on elections policy, as assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Bureau at the New York State Attorney General’s Office, where she successfully brought racial discrimination and sex discrimination cases against major employers in the state, and as a voting rights litigator at Demos, where she also worked with government officials on settlement agreements. She serves on the boards of 100% Democracy (Chair) and Verified Voting. She also conducted First Amendment research for the Universal Voting Working Group, chaired by E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post. Allegra holds a B.A. in Philosophy from McGill University and a J.D. from Emory Law School.

Charanya Krishnaswami is Senior Director for Democracy at Governors Safeguarding Democracy (GSD). Prior to joining GSD, Charanya was appointed to serve as Senior Counselor to the U.S. Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, where she advised department leadership and collaborated closely with interagency, state, and local partners on immigration policy, including regulatory, legal, and operational matters. Charanya previously led U.S.-facing policy advocacy on human rights issues in the Americas at Amnesty International USA and worked on refugee protection matters in the United States and Caribbean region at the U.N. Refugee Agency. Before that, she litigated before state and federal courts on issues related to detention, children’s legal representation, and asylum, first as a Yale Public Interest Fellow at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network in Colorado, and then as the Peter and Patricia Gruber Fellow in Global Justice at Public Counsel in Los Angeles, California. Charanya clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit for the late Hon. Raymond C. Fisher. She received her law degree from Yale Law School, and her undergraduate degrees from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, where she was a President’s Scholar. Charanya’s writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review and the Washington Post, among other outlets.